Stop Coal-to-Liquid!
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Posted on June 11, 2007
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Greenhouse gas emissions, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
The coal industry has been spending exorbitant amounts of money lobbying for legislation that would provide billions of your tax dollars to subsidize liquified coal (CTL) as a fuel alternative for our automobiles and jet engines.
Well, they have what they wanted so far. The legislation has been written, supported by members of Congress from coal states, like Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and those other Applachian states where mountains are being sheared off by the coal industry to get to the coal veins.
This week is crucial and our voices must be heard on Capitol Hill. The Senate is about to vote on legislation addressing energy and climate change. There could be no greater contradiction than voicing concern for the planet and voting for this dirtiest of all fossil fuel industries. The issue seeps into the presidential race as Sen. Obama is one of the authors of the legislation in the Senate. Up until now, Obama has been quite good on environmental issues, but he has a political problem in his state of Illinois, which has a large coal industry.
In the House, there is legislation gaining traction, the “Coal Liquids Fuel Act” (H.R. 2208). Speaker Pelosi wants an energy bill by the 4th of July, and we must make sure this is not part of it. Pelosi has strong environmental credentials, but with coal a significant factor in 15 states, there will be a lot of pressure to get CTL into an energy bill.
Coal enthusiasts claim that new technology will make it possible to sequester much of the CO2 emitted during production. But that technology does not yet exist on any practicable scale, and does not address the damage that is being done in the mining process itself, through strip-mining and mountain-topping.
So now is the time to call Representatives and Senators and tell them to say NO! to coal-to-liquid fuel. This is the moment to be looking for a truly new approach to meeting our energy needs without doing more harm to the planet. We should not be trading ecological disasters for energy independence. We can commit suicide as an act of independence, but it is still madness.
For more info, check out this long and informative article from the LA Times: “Lawmakers look at coal to break oil dependence – But the process of turning the abundant resource into a liquid emits carbon dioxide, making it more damaging to the environment than gasoline.”
For more on Obama’s quandary, check out this post from Grist.
Also, from an important Earth advocacy group, Earthjustice, “Liquid Coal: Undermining the Fight Against Global Warming.”
Regular readers of this blog know what we think of the coal industry, they know what we think about what is happening in Appalachia. But as a reminder, please visit: Mountain Justice Summer and ilovemountains.org. See what is being done to the Earth to get the coal that leads supposedly to our energy independence. This is rape of the Earth. That’s simply what it is. And the driving habits and war-making capacity of human beings are simply not more important than those mountains. This is the worst kind of hubris and arrogance — the kind that leads to another kind of death down the road.
Please take action this week!
Technorati Tags: coal-to liquid, liquified coal, coal industry, energy legislation, carbon dioxide emissions
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5 Responses to “Stop Coal-to-Liquid!”
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The best plans for liquid coal advocate the use of nuclear power at the refinery. If that happens, the co2 problem goes away. We only have around 30 years left on conventional oil, and there will be 9 billion mouths to feed. If we want human life to continue on this planet, we need to be open to ALL options when it comes to supplying our URGENT energy needs.
First, the CO2 problem does not go away with nuclear power at the refinery - burning the fuel still releases CO2, it is certainly less carbon intensive than it would’ve been otherwise.It is important to clarify what we mean by “need”. In the United States, using conventional off the shelf technology, the Maryland Energy Administration estimates that average household energy use could be slashed by 60-80% just by maximizing efficiency. The same is true of automobiles. We don’t “need” Hummers, we “want” them. And even so, a Hummer could be significantly more efficient with some minor aerodynamic tweaking and by incorporating more super light materials.
That 30 year window would be a lot longer if we started drastically reducing our usage while at the same time transitioning to less carbon intensive energy sources, so that we were sure to have enough for our URGENT needs.
Thank you, Morgan. We at Spirituality and Ecological Hope are not nuclear energy friendly. We see enormous problems beginning with the mining process and continuing on through to disposal of waste and proliferation issues in a very dangerous world. We are also concerned that people are being led to believe that production of nuclear energy is CO2 free, which is not the case, as you point out.
One of the most significant immediate contributions we can make to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is by becoming more energy efficient. We are so wasteful about how we use energy that it borders on, no, it IS reckless to say the least. Reduce our usage — yes! and yes!
We start there, right now. And then we move on to the new world of energy: from fossil fuels to a variety of alternatives that must be developed in this generation, alternatives that do not add to the cooking of the atmosphere or a whole variety of environmental disasters.
Margaret
I agree we could be much more efficient in our energy usage. The reality is, however, we simply aren’t going to convince 300 million people here in the US to drastically change their way of life in any reasonable amount of time. We need to continue the effort, because that is part of the long term solution, but we can’t expect to solve our energy problem by this alone.
We are even less likely to convince a few billion Chinese and Indians, who are just beginning to industrialize on a large scale, that they shouldn’t have jobs provided by industrialization, air conditioners and other energy hungry creature comforts because they are wasteful and environmentally unfriendly. Strategically, an Asian society educated on responsible energy consumption is again part of the solution; but, again, is not a timely and fully effective approach.
We have to start stepping outside of our entrenched, dogmatic ways of thinking and work creatively to solve our problems in a pragmatic manner. That includes talking about how we could use nuclear power, for example, until alternative energy technologies are developed to the point where they can provide the bulk of our needs. As you said, Margaret, they (alternative energies) need to be developed in this generation; but they aren’t available now on the scale that they are needed and our energy problems are.
If we continue in our confrontational manner, we will alienate those that can help achieve the goal and fail to meet our energy needs, while failing to attend to the environmental issues that are important to us as a society. Simply put, we are out of balance on this issue and few things good come from a lack of center.
Yes, Jim, we do not need to be confrontational. But we do have to 1) retain hope and
2) exercise courage, dedication, and ?bravado.
If you have not read Lawrence Anthony’s account of the energetic resolve in war-torn Baghdad to save the mistreated and forgotten animals, do find the book, and I hope you enjoy reading it. Mr. Anthony reminds us all (at the end of the story) of how attentive, persevering, and faithful to the cause we all must be on behalf of our planetary home.